Guest essay by Saburo Nonogaki
It has been said that the averaged earth surface temperature would be 255K if no green-house-effect(g-h-e) gases were contained in the atmosphere, and is 288K at present where the atmosphere contains g-h-e gases. The estimation of 255K is based on the earth’s long-term radiative equilibrium and Stefan-Boltzmann’s law which states that the total amount of radiative energy from a black body at absolute temperature T is proportional to T 4.